1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a weather strip for attachment to a flange provided in an opening surface around an opening in a body of a motor vehicle.
2. Description of Related Art
A motor vehicle has openings such as door openings, a trunk room openings, etc., and weather strips are attached to opening surfaces around these openings to effect seals between the opening surfaces and closing members for closing the openings, such as doors, trunk lids, etc.
Upon attaching of these weather strips to the opening surfaces, normally, flanges provided in the opening surfaces are inserted in interior spaces of trim portions of the weather strips.
For example, in order to seal around an opening of a rear trunk of a motor vehicle, as shown in FIG. 1, a weather strip 10 is attached to a flange 12 projecting from an end edge of an opening surface 14 of a vehicle body so as to face a periphery of a trunk lid 16 of the rear trunk.
The weather strip 10 has a trim portion 18 for attachment to the flange 12, and a tubular seal portion 20 for contacting and sealing a rear face of the trunk lid 16.
The trim portion 18 includes an outer side wall 22, an inner side wall 24 and a bottom wall 26, and has a generally U-shaped cross-section. Outer flange holding lips 28 and 30 and inner flange holding lips 32 and 34 respectively project obliquely from interior faces of the outer side wall 22 and the inner side wall 24 towards the bottom wall 26 in an interior space of the U-shaped trim portion 18. An insert of a metal plate is embedded in the trim portion 18.
Upon attaching of the weather strip 10 to the flange 12, a projecting end of the flange 12 provided around the opening of the rear trunk is inserted in the interior space of the trim portion 18. As described above, the trim portion 18 has the outer flange holding lips 28 and 30 and the inner flange holding lips 32 and 34, and these flange holding lips 28, 30, 32 and 34 hold and seal the flange 12, thereby retaining the posture of the weather strip 10 and preventing the weather strip 10 from coming off the flange 12. At this time, the tubular seal portion 20 contacts and seals the rear face of the trunk lid 16.
And a gap between the opening surface 14 and the weather strip 10 is sealed with a body seal lip 36 projecting from an exterior face of the outer side wall 22 of the trim portion 18 to contact the opening surface 14.
The opening surface 14 has curved parts according to the configuration of a vehicle body 38, and the flange 12 has curved areas, too.
Where the trim portion 18 is attached to the curved areas of the flange 12, the tubular seal portion 20 may unfavorably collapse or tilt, and consequently, the tubular seal portion 20 cannot contact the rear face of the trunk lid 16 in position, whereby the seal between the weather strip 10 and the trunk lid 16 may become insufficient.
In addition, the body seal lip 36 may not closely contact the opening surface 14 to form a gap therebetween.
Under these circumstances, in a weather strip 40 including a trim portion 42 and a tubular seal portion 44, as shown in FIG. 2, there has been disclosed the technique of making a lower part 46 of an outer seal wall 48 of the tubular seal portion 44 thickest while making an upper part 50 thereof thinnest (See Unexamined Japanese Patent application publication No. Hei 10-203167, for example). In this case, the thickness of the outer seal wall 48 varies, but the thickness of an inner seal wall 52 does not vary so that tilting of the tubular seal portion 44 cannot be sufficiently prevented.
And, in a weather strip 54 for a wind shield glass, as shown in FIG. 3, there has been proposed to make a top lip 56 projecting from a lozenge-shaped tubular seal portion 58 thickest while making one L-shaped seal wall 60 of the tubular seal portion 58 thinner than the top lip 56 but thicker than the other L-shaped seal wall 62 (See Japanese Utility model publication No. Hei 4-37800, for example).
In this case, the thickness of the tubular seal portion 58 is varied for maintaining the load of the weather strip 54 against the wind shield glass, but, where the weather strip 54 is attached to corner areas of a vehicle body, undesirable tilting of the tubular seal portion 58 of the weather strip 54 has not been prevented.